Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 11:43 am Post subject: Please help me figure out if this is a Tokai

I purchased what - accordig to www.jvguitars.com/ - is a Tokai 1981 ES 335 "pre-lawsuite" I am now trying to sell it and I realize this guitar is a complete mystery to me. It has a Gibson-logo, there is no serial or anything else to identify it by.

I had it to a renowned guitar technician here in Oslo, but he couldn't tell me much. Said it was a nice guitar though...played and sounded good

Does anyone have any idea what this could be? The guitar shop I bought it from seem to be quite serious and have been around for years selling all sorts of vintage guitars.

No neck binding, from the pic it looks to have a volute, color of the neck is wrong, tuners are definitely not tokai.., knobs/bridge/pickguard are all wrong..F-holes look wrong to me but could be the picture. Not an es100 or someone replaced the neck and all hardware. Think you should change your ad.
Pull the neck humbucker, there should be a piece of tape with the model number on it.. but i doubt it very much.

I checked underneath the neck-pickup. Nothing. Seems this guitar has been stripped of anything that might possibly identify it.

Sent JV Guitars an e-mail about a week ago - no reply. Tried calling several times - "Joe" never picks up. He has another similar ad on his website. 1981 Tokai ES335. AT least this one has a Tokai logo.

I guess it will be impossible to ever determine what I have here (?) It plays well and sounds pretty good though...I am also pretty sure it is quite old. I had the bridge changed to improve intonation (..at least that's what the guitar technician said) Otherwise I have only replaced the pickup screws which were very old and worn out.

The one on his website is an actual tokai es100 from those pics. Yours isn't. I
Does your guitar actually have a volute? Was hard to see from the pics.
The 12th fret dots on your guitar are also wrong. They should have known that it wasn't a tokai.

saw the thread this morning, didn't want to be the first one to bare the bad news but there are plenty of shady sellers out there; best to search out the reputable ones before buying, good luck hearing from Joe, don't hold your breath